E-Malt.com News article: USA, AK: Anchorage Brewing Co. moves to a new location

Anchorage Brewing Co.'s moves to a new, 8,000-square-foot building, chron.com reported on September, 13.

"This was the plan from the beginning," owner Gabe Fletcher said. "It took a lot of work to get it to where it is."

Come November, Anchorage Brewing Co. will open to the public for the first time.

While the company undergoes a transformation in South Anchorage, Fletcher said it will run much in the same way. Its staff will stay tiny, its taps rotating and its beers distinct.

"This is the final resting space," he said. "We'll continue to experiment, but this will kind of be the house where we do it from here on out."

Anchorage-made beer is available in most states in the U.S., seven countries in Europe, Iceland and Australia.

Fletcher has held strong to his original vision of producing specialty, barrel-aged beers with little overhead cost. Most of the time, he works alone or brings in his wife or friends to help out. For the new building, he hired an assistant brewer and his sister.

"I just want to have a small amount of employees and take good care of them," he said. "Instead of having 30 or 40 employees and all of a sudden, at the end of the day, you're working so hard and you get so disconnected from what you're making."

Each beer he produces takes between three months and a year to make. His brewery looks more like a winery, filled with the giant oak barrels that he bought used from California wine companies and in which he lets all of his beers age for months. He doesn't expect to change the process any time soon.

"It's a little romantic, I guess," he said. "It's just different. Stainless steel is so sterile, and I just feel oak has so much more life to it. It lends a totally different character to the beer that makes it stand out from everything that everyone else is brewing."

Fletcher has managed to capture a chunk of the market by capitalizing on his innovative, infrequently-used brewing techniques and rolling out new beers in small waves. He assigns some success to the healthy culture of the online "beer geeks."

"They're just so in love with beer," he said. "People's palates are so intense, and everyone's so interested in the process, and the more interesting you make your beer the more crazy these people go for it."

According to the state's Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, at least 27 breweries and brewpubs are licensed in Alaska, seven of those in Anchorage with one license pending for a planned brewery in Mountain View. Anchorage's King Street Brewery will operate just down the road from Anchorage Brewing Co. new location.

Fletcher said Anchorage Brewing Co. will still send most of its product, about 75 percent, out of state.

"My plan is to not oversaturate any market," he said. "I always want there to be some excitement about the product where people are, say, tweeting at each other like, 'Hey it's here,' and before you know it, it's gone."

Fletcher's beers have expanded from six makes to 24 since he started. He and his wife already have a few recipes brewing for the November opening.

"I put everything into each beer," he said. "So I can't really say I have a favorite."



17 September, 2014